ESPNU to Broadcast 2024 NCAA DI Cross Country Championships

NEW ORLEANS – The USTFCCCA has once again combined efforts with ESPN and is pleased to announce that the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Championships will be presented live via telecast via ESPN’s linear channels and through ESPN’s online platforms.

The thrilling, unpredictable event returns to live television for the fifth year in a row, as the upcoming 2024 championships will be exclusively presented on ESPNU and available through the ESPN App on Saturday, November 23, starting at 9:30 a.m., Eastern. The broadcast begins 30 minutes earlier than previous years and will feature a preshow with guest pickers, interviews, and more.

LINK: Watch 2024 NCAA DI Cross Country Championships

The USTFCCCA had previously worked with ESPN to produce each of the four prior championships, in addition to collaborating with other broadcast partners to air the 2008 and 2009 championships. To date, those have been the only live telecasts of the NCAA Cross Country Championships.

The two-and-a-half hour live telecast on November 23 will feature, without commercial interruption, the women’s six-kilometer, national-championship race at 10:20 a.m., Eastern, with the men’s 10-kilometer, national-championship race to follow at 11:10 a.m., Eastern.

Post-championships coverage and the ensuing awards ceremonies will be streamed live on ESPN+ and through the ESPN App on mobile and connected devices.

LINK: Watch Post-Championship Coverage of #NCAAXC

The event will take place at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Cross Country Course in Madison, Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin is hosting the national championship for the first time since 2018.

Truly unique in the collegiate sporting landscape, no other sport features the number of institutions represented on the field-of-play at one time as compared to cross country. Thirty-one teams in each race will battle to raise an NCAA Division I national-championship trophy while up to 255 student-athletes per race will be vying for individual glory.

Teams and individuals chosen to compete in the championships were first revealed via a selection show this past Saturday on NCAA.com.

NC State’s women and Oklahoma State’s men are the defending champions, having topped the podium last year in Earlysville, Virginia. It was the Wolfpack’s third consecutive national title and became the first women’s program to do so since Stanford from 2005 to 2007, while the Cowboys captured their first since 2012 and ruined Northern Arizona’s quest for a four-peat. Graham Blanks, who won the men’s individual title last year, returns and hopes to become the first back-to-back winner since Conner Mantz in 2020 and 2021. The race for the women’s individual title is wide-open with Parker Valby having since turned professional.

The championships telecast, produced by the USTFCCCA in coordination with TrackTown Productions, will be hosted by SportsCenter’s John Anderson with Carrie Tollefson and Chris Derrick providing analysis and play-by-play.

Anderson and Tollefson have previously teamed up on ten broadcasts of the TCS New York City Marathon as well as the past four broadcasts of the NCAA Cross Country Championships.

Anderson, a longtime (since retired) staple for ESPN’s SportsCenter, has provided hosting and play-by-play commentary for several collegiate track & field and cross country events across ESPN networks. He has also hosted The Bowerman Presentation nine times.

Tollefson, a five-time NCAA champion and 2004 Olympian, won the Division I cross country individual title as a junior in 1997 and she led the Villanova Wildcats to the cross country national-championship crown during her 1998 senior campaign. Her work as an analyst has been featured previously with ESPN, ABC, NBC, NBCSN, and USATF.tv — a bevy of work that has featured many world-class running events.

Derrick is a former Stanford star and professional runner with personal bests of 13:08.04 in the 5000 meters and 27:31.38 in the 10,000 meters, which ranks him eighth in collegiate history in the event. He is a three-time U.S. Cross Country Championships individual champion with consecutive victories from 2013 to 2015 and a 14-time USTFCCCA All-American.